


hey baby, i think i wanna marry you

by cmbing



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, F/M, drunk jake/amy forever, in las vegas no less!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23996008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmbing/pseuds/cmbing
Summary: Apparently, seven drink Amy is bridal Amy.“What if we gotmarried?” Her mouth forms an O.And seven drink Jake is down for anything.“Oh my god, weshould.”
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 11
Kudos: 110





	hey baby, i think i wanna marry you

**Author's Note:**

> okay, i already posted this on my tumblr, but i'm going to self-indulgently post it here as well. originally, this was gonna be like 900 words but it turned into an actual plotline. i usually don't like AU(ish) plots for b99, but this one was a lot of fun to write. 
> 
> and YEAH i am going to use a cliche lyric for the title. marry you by bruno mars is a classic

It was supposed to be an undercover assignment.

After much success with Jake’s mafia sting, the FBI reached out to Holt once more, asking him to send Detective Jake Peralta and one other detective of similar competence. The answer was easy: Amy Santiago.

Bags were packed and new aliases were given: Leo Adams, upcoming tech entrepreneur, and Marissa Cordova, a hotshot lawyer with cash to blow. They were to sit in on various poker and blackjack games, rubbing elbows with known drug lord, Carter Reichs, and hopefully come out with a few important arrests. It would take a week at most, and if anything, they would at least get access to free alcohol and big biddings.

Amy stares out the plane window. Brooklyn starts to become a speck, skyscrapers and city traffic blurring into a grey wash.

“Have you ever been to Las Vegas before?” Amy asks, turning to look at her partner.

“Once,” Jake says, focusing on the shitty action movie playing on the screen in front of him. “My mom and I went to surprise my dad.” He briefly sours. “I found him hooking up with one of the poker dealers.”

“Oh.” She never really knows what to say when Jake brings up his father.

“How about you?”

She shakes her head. “No, I never had much of an interest. I’m not that good at card games, and I’d rather keep my money than gamble it away.”

He snorts. “The FBI clearly picked the right person for this assignment.”

She rolls her eyes. “We’re not _actually_ playing. We’re working—and I enjoy working.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“No, it’s just… hard to imagine you doing much else.”

Amy nearly objects, tells him that he knows her better than he lets on because they’re friends. She swears they’re friends. But since Teddy and Sophia, sometimes they find themselves in limbo, and she, for perhaps the first time, doesn’t truly have an answer.

-

Amy throws her suitcase on her bed and starts pulling out her clothes, deciding which outfit she should wear for their first operation. Her typical pantsuit would endure too much ribbing from Jake and the red dress she threw in at the last minute is cut so short, she would need at least four shots in her before she ever considered it. Eventually, she decides on the white dress she has buried at the bottom. It’s classy and just enough revealing that she stands out.

She starts unbuttoning her shirt when suddenly, a door she presumed belonged to a closet opens, and Jake steps through. She yelps, covering her chest with a pillow.

“Oh my god, Ames! Our rooms are connected!”

“Get _out_ ,” she hisses.

He stops, breaking into a grin. “Were you changing?”

“Yes! Because I’m doing my job!” Her eyes narrow. “Tell me you’re not staying dressed like that.”

He looks down at his outfit: old jeans and a worn (read: torn at the right armpit and fraying at the bottom) _Die Hard_ shirt. “Uh duh, of course, I will. I take undercover seriously.”

“Might be the only thing you do take seriously.”

“Now you’re catching on, Santiago.”

She shoos him away to finish putting on the dress and doing a quick touch up on her makeup. She tries to get back at Jake, bursting through their shared door in hopes of catching him in an embarrassing position. Instead, he’s readjusting his black bowtie.

“Wow, Ames,” he says with a laugh. “We look like the figurines on top of a wedding cake.”

“Oh god, please never say that again.”

He gives her a shit-eating grin. “No promises.”

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter. We need to get going,” she says. “Intel says this is around the time that Reichs starts playing. If we want to get in on the same game, we have to go now.”

“Okay, okay, sounds good.”

She smooths down her dress once more and pulls loose fingers through her hair before making her way to the door.

He brushes past her and she swears she hears him say, “You look beautiful.”

-

They’re five shots in before she knows it.

“I can’t believe,” she slurs, “he didn’t show up.”

“It’s only the first night, Ames,” he says, grinning lazily. “We still have five more days.”

“We’re like, the best detectives ever,” she says. “What if those other cops from”—she shudders—“Los Angeles end up catching him?”

“There’s no way. We’re detective geniuses detectives… super-geniuses?” His eyes bug out. “I’m so drunk.”

“Me too.” She smiles. “They never should have left us an open tab. I hold my liquor better than anyone else.”

“Oh noooo, you don’t. You’re lucky we moved on from four drink Amy. I think you were about to bang that guy over there.” Jake points to a man at least twenty years her senior. She pales. “Now you’re just confident Amy.”

“Nuh-uh, I’m doing better than you. That’s a _fact_.”

“In your dreams. At least you’re a lot more fun this way.”

“What way?”

“Stupid drunk way.”

“Pssshhh, I’m always fun. _Alllll-ways_. You saw me dancing over there a half-hour ago. I was killing it with my dance moves.”

“Killing it, yeah, yeah, that’s for sure,” he teases warmly.

She grabs his wrist, eyes blown wide. “Let’s do more shots.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t six drink Amy depressed Amy?”

“Maybe,” she says, then breaks into a smile. “Let’s do two shots each then.”

“What’s seven drink Amy?”

“I have no idea.”

-

Apparently, seven drink Amy is bridal Amy.

“What if we got _married_?” Her mouth forms an O.

And seven drink Jake is down for anything.

“Oh my god, we _should_.”

Amy stumbles down to one knee, proposing with a loose beer bottle cap. “Jake Peralta, will you marry me?”

He places his hands over his heart in pure elation. “Amy Santiago, I will marry you.”

She throws herself in his arms, messily clinging onto his abdomen. He grins into her hair and around them, patrons and gamblers burst into applause. Hazily, Amy thinks something is off, that they’re doing something they shouldn’t. But then, his mouth touches hers, tasting of expensive tequila and lime, and she forgets what sober Amy might think of this decision.

They start jogging, tripping and giggling and faces split open with grins, to a Las Vegas chapel, fingers intertwined and bickering over who will take whose last name.

-

Her head is pounding. Her mouth is dry and she can barely open her eyes and _fuck_ , her head is pounding. Hangovers have never been kind to her and this morning is no different. In her sleep-addled daze, she spots her dress lying in the corner, quickly realizing she’s only wearing her bra and panties.

She moves her arm and hits something, warm and solid and… _Jake_. Jake who is shirtless and Jake who is fast asleep and Jake who is wearing a cheap wedding band.

She glances at her left hand where she’s adorning a matching ring.

“Jake! Oh my god, Jake,” she says hurriedly.

He barely stirs. “Huh?”

She starts shoving his side, poking and prodding his ribs. “Get up, get up, get up. We did something, oh my god, we made the biggest mistake ever, oh my god, Jake, _wake up!_ ”

He sleepily blinks at her. “Did we kill someone?”

“No—we got _married_ ,” she says as if it’s a worse crime.

He brings his left hand up in front of his eyes and frowns. “Hmm.”

“Hmm!? That’s all you have to say!? Hmm!?”

“In case you didn’t realize, Santiago.” He rubs at his temples. “I’m a bit hungover.”

“Well, I am too, asshole, but hangovers go away. Marriage is permanent.”

“We’ll just get a divorce. Now, let me go back to sleep.”

She punches him in the shoulder. “ _Jake_.”

He glares at her, snaps: “What, Detective?”

Her eyes take in his naked chest, and she further pulls up the loose sheet covering her near-bare body. “Did we…?”

“No way,” he awkwardly clears his throat. “There’s no way. We would have remembered… wouldn’t we?”

“We were pretty wasted,” she slowly admits. “And if I went back to four drink Amy…”

“No, no, there’s no way,” he flails with his words. “I can barely remember us being able to stand on our own two feet at the end of the night.”

“You’re right, you’re right.” An awkward pause. “I guess we should get ready for the day.” She starts getting up before remembering her appearance and feverishly waves her hand at him. “ _Don’t look_.”

“I promise I won’t.” He buries his face into his pillow.

Amy makes her way to the shower before briefly considering in horror, “Didn’t I say something about consummating—“

“We didn’t, Amy!”

-

When she steps out of the bathroom, wearing a pantsuit she hopes he’ll loathe, he isn’t in bed. Amid the ruffled sheets and thrown pillows, she finds her phone and turns it on.

And then, nearly yells.

She stares at her lock-screen. It is no longer a picture of a crossword puzzle; rather, it’s a picture of them standing at the altar, grinning at each other, Amy in her white dress and Jake in his black tux, and it looks so much like a legitimate wedding picture, she can’t breathe. It feels real, how he smiles at her and she holds his hand tightly and their lips are inching from touching. 

They look happy; they look in love. And she almost starts to believe it, believe in this sham of a marriage built upon liquor and drunken laughter, before coming to her senses and blaming her idiosyncratic thoughts on her grueling hangover instead.

She quickly changes the picture.

-

They don’t talk more than they have to for the rest of the assignment. Jake doesn’t walk back through their connected door and Amy doesn’t touch an ounce more of alcohol. They get their arrests by day four and head out on the first flight they can the next morning. The sun is barely up, a golden hue on the muted black horizon, and Amy fights off exhaustion with cheap airplane coffee.

Jake sits beside her, slowly blinking and about to succumb to his weariness.

“Flight should never be this early,” he mumbles. It’s the first thing he’s said to her that doesn’t relate to work.

“It’s better than red-eyes.”

“Hmm, maybe,” he considers, his words soft and cottony. “But flying is cool at night. It’s like you’re in space.”

She quietly laughs. “That’s one way to put it.”

No answer. She thinks he’s fallen asleep. Instead—“We’ll have to figure this out when we land.”

“I know.”

“I never thought I’d divorce you, Santiago.”

“We’ll get an annulment. It’s different.”

“If you say so.”

Another pregnant pause. The plane starts to move down the runway like it’s chasing the fading moon.

“I guess,” he murmurs, his head falling to her shoulder. She freezes at their body contact. “I guess I thought if we got married, it would be the marriage that sticks.”

He nods off before she can reply.

\- 

Amy realizes she’s still wearing her ring. At first, she chalked it up to her cover, ignoring the harsh glint of cheap gold in the casino lights for what it actually meant and proclaiming it as being a trait of her character instead.

But now she’s home in Brooklyn and she’s still wearing her ring.

She thinks to call Jake—they landed hours ago and she can guess he’s been sleeping the whole day as she has. Except, she isn’t sure exactly what to say. _You have a lawyer right because we both need lawyers for the annulment to go through_ or _let’s give it a week and then deal with this_ or _do we tell our friends? Did you tell Charles? I swear to god, Peralta, if you told Charles—_

There’s a knock at her door.

She walks over and opens it, revealing Jake Peralta, her partner and friend and… husband.

“Hi,” he says. He almost sounds shy, looking boyish in his NYPD hoodie and faded blue jeans.

“Hi.”

“Can I come in?”

Unsure: “Yes.”

He sits on her couch. She sits on the complete opposite end. They look at each other. Wait for the silence to break.

“Jake—“

“Amy—“

“You go—“

“No, you go—“

“ _Peralta_ —“

“ _Santiago_ —“

“I think—“

“I don’t want to—“

She holds her hand up. “You don’t want to _what_?”

He stares at his shoes.

“…Jake.”

He looks up at her, eyes dark and vast. “I don’t want to,” then, more quietly, “divorce you. And I know I sound crazy, but I can’t imagine divorcing you, Amy. I like you. I like you a lot. You’re my best friend and my partner and I know we don’t make sense on paper, but I think we could be something great. And okay, being married before we actually date isn’t a part of the plan I had for us—“

“You had a plan?”

“—but if it were to happen to any pair of people, I’m not surprised it happened to us. We’ve had a lot of crazy days and this week has been no different. Minus the wedding rings, of course,” he laughs.

Hesitantly, she asks, “You didn’t take yours off either?”

He shakes his head.

“This is crazy, Jake…” she says.

“But?”

“How did you know I was going to say ‘but?’”

He smiles, curved and brilliant. “Because I know you, Ames.”

“ _But_ … I really like you too,” she says, almost embarrassed by the capacity her heart already has for him. “It’s just… this makes no sense. This is so far out of our control. There is no binder on marrying your coworker before even going out on a date with him.”

“Then, how about you make that binder? And make a new plan for us?” he asks.

“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“Of course, I do. I’m your husband.”

They both burst into laugher.

She rolls her eyes. “I think we should stick with the term boyfriend for now.”

His eyes slightly widen. “So, you do too? You want to give this a chance?”

She leans forward, gently kissing him. He lets out a noise of shock before kissing her back. It’s soft and tentative until she presses harder and he presses back, equally ardent. They barely make it to her bedroom, eager and hands slipping under clothes. Amy has been with other men, namely Teddy, but it’s never been like _this_. So easy and known and real. Like they fit.

And when she wakes up the next day, she realizes his left arm is slung across her body, his hand resting over hers. Their wedding bands shine in the morning light together. It makes her smile.


End file.
